On the popular TV show West Wing originally broadcast 1999-2006' [barely mentioning her deafness is] a conscious choice. Aaron Sorkin never intended it to be a part of the show... It was just part of who I was.

Aaron was intelligent enough to know that it was ability that mattered, not disability. Which is a word I'm not crazy about using."

A good film or television program holds our attention and provides the viewer with lasting images. Recognizing the accuracy of these images is crucial when they portray persons with disabilities.

Films and television at their best do not stereotype or add misconceptions about persons with disabilities. Instead a good script gives viewers insight into the real world of a person with a disability. Such a script

Presents characters with complex personalities

Depicts characters living full lives within their communities

Uses cast members such as Marlee Matlin and Mark Zupan who have the disability

A hearing teacher at a residential school for the deaf meets a headstrong deaf woman whom he sees as a teaching challenge until they fall in love and the teacher becomes the pupil.

Academy Award winner, best actress, Marlee Matlin.

Sarah Norman (actress Marlee Matlin), the deaf student in Children of A Lesser God learns to live her own life. This actress, who is deaf, is also seen with recurring roles on televisionís Picket Fences, Law and Order and West Wing. [see sidebar]

Five easy decades : how Jack Nicholson became the biggest movie star in modern times

Dennis McDougal.

Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley & Sons, c2008.

"Unconventional, uninhibited, and unrestrained, Jack Nicholson is both a famous and infamous pop-culture icon known for his romantic escapades, his hair-trigger temper, and his love affair with the L.A. Lakers. Now, this biography gives you an incisive look at the megawatt Method actor with the enigmatic Cheshire cat grin." "Jack rose to fame with portrayals of antiheroes ranging from the demented, demonic, and despicable to characters who were somehow lovable in spite of their eccentricities. He has won three Oscars and seven Golden Globes, but beyond the accolades and his trademark shades is a man who remains largely unknowable. His bad-boy image masks a complicated past, a complex present, half a dozen children, an art collection, and real estate and business empires that have made him one of the world's wealthiest entertainers." "Author Dennis McDougal has scoured public records extending back to the 1930s, spent hundreds of hours in film and public libraries, and interviewed scores of friends, associates, and family who Jack either didn't know or forgot long ago, to create an account of Jack's life that recounts the good, the bad, and the just plain unfathomable." "In many ways, Jack's story mirrors that of Hollywood. For fifty years - from J.J. Gittes to the Joker; Easy Rider to Five Easy Pieces; The Shining, Terms of Endearment, and A Few Good Men to As Good as it Gets and The Departed - his life and career reflect the shifting fortunes of an industry that set the cultural pace for America, and then the world. Find out how it all happened, year by year, film by film, through triumph and trauma, in five easy decades."--BOOK JACKET.

Melvin"s (actor Jack Nicholson) obsessive compulsive disorder is used to set the stage for many of the comedic moments in As Good As It Gets.